


magic in your veins

by cave_canem



Series: magic in your veins [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M, the foxhole is a magic shop, you don't know how magic works and neither do i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 16:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15733254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cave_canem/pseuds/cave_canem
Summary: On one hand: Andrew Minyard, an anomaly; a magic suppressor in a world of witches.On the other: Neil Josten, runaway witch trying to lay down, comes across a safe haven in the form of David Wymack's magic shop.





	magic in your veins

**Author's Note:**

> It's bugged me for a long time so I'm finally putting [my magic au](http://jsteneil.tumblr.com/tagged/magic-au) on ao3 from my tumblr. Each part was written separately, and I may add to the story in the future, so I'm keeping everything as a series rather than a multi-chaptered fic, but the parts are in chronological order.

The first time Andrew sees Neil, he walks right out of the door.

“No.”

His tone is final. Wilds doesn’t seem to register it.

“Andrew, please,” she says.

Her words are at odds with the grim determination on her face. Probably she’s trying to be polite. Andrew doesn’t have time for fake politeness. They want something from him, and he won’t deliver: they’re done, as far as he’s concerned.

“You didn’t hear me,” he says. “No.”

The man—the witch—is still behind him, slumped in the chair they dumped him in and barely conscious.

“You don’t have to touch him,” Renee says, sliding in between Andrew and Dan. “Your presence is enough.”

The others around the room fidget, uncomfortable.

Witches.

Andrew slides a look around, taking in the dark faces and the sidelong looks. There’s only one of Andrew and seven of them, desperate and magic and dangerous. Eight if you count the slice of a witch silently waking up behind Andrew. Still, they fear _him_ , uneasy and suspicious.

They should. Witches rely on their magic; a part of them that’s entirely linked to their survival, a power that connects them all. Except Andrew, because Andrew isn’t a witch, he’s worse.

Sometimes he wonders how he survived this long, when he’s endangering the vast majority of the planet, himself included.

“He’s waking up,” Nicky says from where he’s leaning over the prone witch.

Nicky doesn’t touch him but yelps all the same when the man kicks him hard in the shins. Wymack and Matt surge forward, slamming the man back into the chair and avoiding his flailing limbs.

“That’s gonna bruise,” Nicky says, offended.

The man doesn’t answer: his blue eyes are bright and wild. Andrew guesses he has no remorse about kicking the man keeping him in against his will.

Andrew has no remorse about the impatient snap of his fingers that draws the man’s attention and the threatening gleam of his knives. Blue eyes widen a second before snapping back to Andrew’s face, expressionless.

There’s the spark of fear that Andrew cares for. In a few minutes, there’ll be much more.

“Nicky, out,” Wymack says. “Matt, Dan, Allison—out.”

Aaron is the first one to leave. He has had one foot out of the door since they brought the man back from where they found him, trying to break into the shop. Andrew eyes him until the door bangs closed behind him, then turns back to the stranger as the others follow.

The backroom isn’t a place made for an interrogation. It’s comfy and too light, even though Wymack drew the curtains when they dumped the man inside ten minutes ago. Andrew takes a seat on the table near the door, waiting.

“Are you going to bolt if I untie you?” Wymack asks.

The answer is a resounding yet unspoken yes. Wymack sighs and drags a chair in front of their guest, who tracks all of his movements like a cornered and flightless bird.

“Name’s Wymack,” doesn’t elicit any more answers. “Who are you?”

Silence.

“Alright. Why were you trying to break in?”

After a minute of staring contest, Wymack lets out a sigh. “Okay. Well, the Foxhole is a private property, so I’m going to have to call the police.”

He gets up, whipping out of his phone, and has composed the number when the man finally speaks.

“No.”

“No?”

The man grits out: “please.”

“Don’t say it if it’s so painful,” Andrew says from his perch close to the door.

The man’s eyes flit back to him in an instant, taking in Andrew’s stance and the knife he carelessly turns between his fingers. Andrew waggles it at him in warning.

“Don’t call the police.”

Wymack pockets his phone. “What else?”

“I—untie me. I’ll tell you. Please, my arms hurt.”

It’s the most pitiful attempt at weakness that Andrew has ever witnessed. He snorts, but Wymack doesn’t pay him any attention, stepping behind the man to undo the harsh knots around his wrists.

Wymack is losing his touch: the moment the witch’s hands are separated again, he rips out of his chair, slamming it back against Wymack, and rolls out of arm range, his back to the row of windows. He lifts his hands in the same motion, making complicated movements that Andrew’s seen witches do his entire life.

Nothing happens, of course.

“Lead,” the man says, looking down at his hands with stupefaction as Wymack gets up, dusts himself up.

“No,” Andrew says from across the room.

“I don’t understand.”

He wouldn’t. Andrew is a rarity; one in a million, or a billion, or all of society. A magic cancelling lead weapon, except very much breathing and human.

The weight in his bones is the same, at least.

“You can’t do magic,” Wymack says. “You can try, you won’t manage. Don’t try the windows either.”

The man turns away and puts his palm flat against the window pane, testing its sturdy surface. It’s handmade; nothing magic about it, but strong enough to resist a simple fist slamming into it.

“Yes.”

“You should sit down,” Wymack says. “I’ve got seven other witches outside who want answers as well.”

“I have nothing to tell you.”

“Your name, at least. You know mine.”

“That’s your problem.”

Wymack sinks into the couch, clicking his tongue with impatience. “Once more, without the bullshit.”

“I don’t like being trapped,” the man snaps, stepping away from the windows.

“I don’t like being lied to. Or people breaking into my shop.”

It takes a while and a higher number of staring contests than Andrew really cares for before the man realizes he can’t walk out of here without shedding any truths.

“Neil Josten,” he says. “I was trying to get medicine.”

“For?”

“I was feeling lightheaded.”

There’s that temper again.

Wymack’s Foxhole sells spells and enchantments, some over-the-counter medicine which utility Andrew very much doubts. The latter aren’t worth breaking in and getting caught.

The man is lying, of course. Andrew suspects he’s been lying since he got there, and for many years before that.

“My patience is large,” Wymack says, “but not limitless.”

“I needed a spell.”

“Why not pay for it?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Alright, Neil Josten,” Wymack says. “I won’t call the police. Don’t come back.”

He gets up to leave and gestures at Josten to follow him to the door.

“Just like that?” Josten says. He hasn’t moved from his place next to the window.

“As I said: don’t come back.”

Andrew jumps from his seat on the desk right after Josten, walking too close to him. The man’s back is rigid with tension; he doesn’t like being tagged from so close, just as Andrew predicted. Andrew doesn’t care: the man is a threat and will be treated as such.

Besides, the closer Andrew is to witches, the stronger his influence. He doesn’t touch a lot of people but Renee once described it as a hot churn in her stomach; Nicky, as being bled out, his limbs heavy and his head light. As Andrew was holding a knife to his stomach at that point, there is controversy among the Foxhole employees as to whether it is a legitimate reaction to Andrew’s power or not.

Andrew doesn’t care. He makes people uneasy and powerless: it’s useful and, considering his life, almost poetic.

They pass the other employees—the Foxes—gathered in the main room of the shop, who unabashedly stare at Josten as he walks to the door. Andrew slips out behind him.

“Stop following me,” Josten says just as the door closes behind them with a shrill carillon.

“I’m not.” Andrew takes out his cigarette pack and shakes it as the witch. “Smoke?”

“Yes.”

This isn’t the answer Andrew expected. He doesn’t say anything and keeps his face smooth but hand a stick to Josten and bring his lighter to lit it up.

This close to a witch, his skin is tingling as well.

The cigarette is quickly lit; Josten takes a drag to prompt the fire farther, then exhales and holds his cigarette like an amulet.

What a waste.

“It’s you,” Josten says. He inhales smoke deeply. “The power suppressor. It’s you.”

“He catches on at last,” Andrew says.

“You can’t do magic. That’s why you use a lighter.”

That much is obvious. How roundabout would it be for Andrew to be a witch and suppress people’s powers at the same time? He already feels stretched in two, there’s already a magical Minyard out into the world: it wouldn’t survive Andrew too.

“Yes,” Andrew says, fixing the man in the eyes.

It’s easy because they’re almost the same size. The man stares back, curious this time. He stands too close to be out of Andrew’s range: he has to feel the dizziness of being stripped of his powers, but he doesn’t move.

Andrew’s cigarette burns quicker than Josten’s, because he actually smokes it. He drops the butt into the ashtray sitting outside the shop and takes out his lighter, clicking it on once in Josten’s face. The flame glints in his pale, cold eyes. It’s the only reaction he receives.

“Don’t come back,” he warns, before stepping away.

By the time the carillon is done announcing Andrew’s return outside, there’s no one outside the busy windows of the shop. The Foxes are already chatting among them about the encounter. Renee gives him a long searching look, but Andrew ignores her incentive to talk, heading straight towards the backroom. Andrew doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t want to think, either, but he’ll take it if sleep doesn’t come. The backroom is his: no one will come inside as long as he there.

That’s a certainty, at least.

* * *

 

Wymack really can’t afford eight employees.

The Foxhole isn’t big enough of a store to keep that many people on a steady payroll. Instead, they all work whenever they can, a few hours here, a shift there, and in exchange Wymack lets them live in the building he owns above the shop. All of them except Dan, who’s the Foxhole sales manager and the only true employee, have jobs they dedicate themselves to to make a living.

Kevin doesn’t either, but that’s because Kevin is rich, and traumatised, and tags along Andrew and Wymack as much as he can. Weirdly, he prefers to stay in the shop when Andrew leaves for Eden’s Twilight. They drink in the backroom too, so it’s not a problem for Kevin and his dependency.

Andrew isn’t one for addictions, but he’s been told enough times that he can’t understand that he’s not bothered about letting Kevin fight this battle alone.

“Alcohol is weird for witches,” Nicky told him once. “It doesn’t affect us the way it affects you. It’s kind of--buzzy.”

Andrew had raised a brow and turned to fill up the tray at the counter. Witches usually agree that a lot of things don’t affect them and Andrew the same way, because of their magic, but no one ever really thinks about how these conclusions came to be, if Andrew is such an exception.

Alcohol does not really affect Andrew, he can give them that; though it’s an effect of his own willpower rather than magic.

Andrew doesn’t resent witches anymore. He’s even stopped being angry at himself. Miracles of therapy, some would say; end result of a life of repression and bone-deep apathy, Andrew thinks. It doesn’t really matter why or how, just that he’s learned how to use it to his advantage.

“Aaron?” Wilds asks.

They’re all gathered into the backroom, doing the weekly charade to determine who’ll take the Friday evening shift. It’s a waste of time. They’ll end up drawing names anyway.

“No,” Aaron says, perfectly illustrating Andrew’s point.

“Aw,” Nicky says. “If you volunteer, I’ll come down to entertain you.”

“Ugh.” Aaron scoots away from Nicky’s forced embrace. “Why don’t you volunteer yourself?”

“There’s a fine line between making fun of someone who works and working yourself,” Nicky says. “One is way funnier than the other.”

The conversation dissolves in a fake argument. A pillow is thrown. Andrew looks back to check it hasn’t landed on or hurt any of his family, then turns back to the window, exhaling a wide cloud of smoke out in the evening air.

What a waste a time.

“Alright!” Wilds says over the raised voices. Calm comes back gradually, though Reynolds gets up and crosses the room to sit next to Boyd with a huff. Kevin rolls his eyes. “Let’s draw names.”

Andrew doesn’t check his watch, but he’s pretty sure it’s taken ten minutes less than usual to get to the point. He might even make it out of the room before his cigarette goes out. There’s bickering while Wilds writes the name on a piece of paper, shows it around to prove she’s being fair, then rips it into small shreds and stuffs them in an old-fashioned bowler hat they keep for this very reason.

Then, silence.

Andrew is aware of the Foxes all gathered around him, looking at him expectantly. He can see their reflexion in the window.

“Andrew,” Kevin starts to ask, but someone shushes him.

Were Andrew interested enough to care, he would roll his eyes. The habit of the Foxes to walk on eggshells around him is astoundingly stupid and annoying, especially now that Andrew’s in full control of his capacities.

“Any time,” Wymack says at last.

He’s the only one who’s never feared Andrew. It’s irritating. Andrew grudgingly respects it on his best days.

He takes his time finishing his cigarette, stubs it out, then holds out his arm without budging from his seat or looking away from the view outside. He can hear Wilds coming closer with the hat, the patchy softness of the old threadbare felt.

He takes it with one hand, draws a paper slip with the other, and opens it.

 _Andrew_ , it says.

He glares at Wilds, just a bit, for writing down his name in the first place. She’s biting his lip, reading over his shoulder.

“Sorry?” she asks in a low voice.

“Who’s it?” Nicky asks.

Andrew crumples the paper, drops it back inside the hat, and throws it back to Wilds with an underhand pass. He’s been the one assigned to drawing names since they realized the Foxes had all cheated and magically changed the names at least once. Of course, they can’t do that now that Andrew’s magic suppressor powers aren’t being suppressed themselves anymore, but the habit has stuck. A way to make sure he stays until the end, he guesses.

“You didn’t have anything planned?” Renee enquires when the other Foxes realize they’ve avoided several hours of idly sitting around in a deserted shop on the busiest night of the week.

Andrew doesn’t answer. He’s not working at Eden’s Twilight on Friday, though he does on Saturday. He was planning on doing nothing, which doesn’t change a lot from the other days. Options are limited, when his very presence can induce sickness into the most sensitive souls. Clubs are good for that, because they have lead charms all over the place, to avoid fights degenerating between inebriated witches: they hide Andrew’s presence. It’s the only reason he’s even able to work for Eden’s Twilight, really.

Andrew climbs up to the roof after that. The backroom lounge feels stuffy; witches always complain about his effect on them, but Andrew has a theory it goes both ways. Spending time with the Foxes has a way of draining him, an almost physical reaction. Bee suggested that it might be because he cares about them more than he does about strangers he only sees in passing at his job; Andrew just thinks it’s exposure, like frostbite gnawing at his limbs.

*

The Foxes settle into the lounge after dinner for a movie night, as if they don’t already spend enough time together and can actually stand each other for more than fifteen minutes.

Aaron take one look at their set-up and leaves.

“I’m going out with Katelyn,” he says at Nicky’s insistence.

He looks right at Andrew, sitting behind the counter, when he says it. Andrew looks back. He lets him go.

“We’re watching a movie,” Renee slips in to tell him when the noise has settled down a bit in the backroom. “You’re welcome to join us. We’ll know when there’s a customer.”

“No.”

Renee shrugs. “Alright. We’ll still be there if you change your mind.”

Andrew won’t. He lets her go too, watches the door closes behind her, cutting off the unprofessional noise of the Foxes pretending they’re a somewhat united bunch.

Time passes slowly. Andrew spins on the chair behind the counter, fiddles with a pen, sits still for hours on end, watching people come and go by the windows of the shop. It’s a delicate balance, being lost in his thoughts and drowning in them without hope of peaceful return. There’s no annoying cousin or angry brother to tug him back on earth; Andrew’s mind is a marsh of its own, too quick to pull him under even when he stands still.

The carillon above the door rings about two hours into Andrew’s shift. Andrew doesn’t move when the man steps in, even though the man does. He’s seen him come, after all.

“Oh,” Neil Josten says. “It’s you.”

Andrew’s slams a hand on his desk to stop the pen spinning.

“What do you want?”

“I need a place to stay.”

“No.”

Josten raises a brow. “That’s not your call. The paper says the apartment is rented by your boss.”

He points out the paper taped inside the window, in a corner between a flyer for an amateur rock concert and an ad for private math lessons.

“Not to you,” Andrew says.

“Why not?”

“Is your memory so poor?”

Josten shrugs. “Let me talk to him, at least. You can be there to make sure I don’t, I don’t know, attack him or something.”

“Magic isn’t the only form of aggression.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?”

Andrew pulled his knife on the man a few weeks ago.

He relents, mostly because Nicky slots his head through the back door and says, “Oh.”

Ten seconds later, Wymack is standing in the shop with all the other Foxes gathered around. It’s worth wondering why they even need to draw names for the Friday night shift if they’re all going to stay there anyway.

“I need a place to stay,” Josten says again to Wymack’s face. “I saw the ad.”

“Why should I rent to you?”

“Because I have the money to pay and considering the state of this place, I’d say you need it.”

Wilds makes an affronted noise. Josten’s not wrong: with the extremely low rent Wymack asks of the Foxes and the extra bucks he slides their way whenever they pick an extra shift, his shop is hardly prospering. Wymack is an idealist, however, and not interested by money, which is why Andrew knows he’s seen something more in Josten when he tells him:

“Walk with me.”

Josten squints at him. His wariness is written all over him. He’s not one for trust: he holds himself in a way that says he’s ready to bolt at the first sudden move.

When Wymack gestures him outside so, Andrew guesses, they can go on the same life-changing walk he inflicted upon Andrew when he and his lot first arrived, Josten slips by the door quickly, before Wymack can even cross the room and hold him the door.

He’s a slippery thing of a man, more stray cat than witch.

“Wymack, you can’t actually be considering it,” Kevin says. “He’s--”

“In need of a place to stay,” Wymack cuts in. “I seem to recall you being in the same position a few months back.” He pats his pockets, takes out an empty cigarette pack. “I’ll buy you another one,” he says to Andrew.

“Buy it for yourself,” Andrew answers, but he slides his on the counter.

Wymack takes it with a nod, and steps out behind Josten, huddled under a streetlamp and watching them through the window. The Foxes watch them go, silent and united against an outside threat like only fractured messes like themselves can be.

“Is no one going to say it?” Reynolds says after a while.

“I don’t think it would be very useful,” Renee answers. “He’ll tell us if and when he wants to.”

“We don’t even know if he’s gonna stay,” Boyd says. “Gossipping has never hurt anyone.”

“Did you see his face? He’s a wreck. Of course Wymack will let him stay.”

A concert of protests irrupts at Reynolds’ usual lack of tact. They all know she’s not wrong, even if they don’t want to admit it, so no one takes up Nicky on his bet that Wymack will let Josten stay.

“You’re no fun,” Nicky says. “Alright, bets on how he got--” Nicky gesture to his own face with a grimace.

“It’s all bandaged,” Boyd says. “You can’t see anything.”

“I think I saw a little of blood through the gaze,” Reynolds says.

“Which one?”

“The right one.”

“His right or our right ?”

“God, Hemmick. His right, obviously. Why would I talk about our right?”

“Well, I don’t know, but the betting needs to be fair, so if you have info you need to share it--”

“Since when is betting ever fair?”

Andrew tunes out the rest of the conversation. As much as they speculate over Josten’s ruined pretty face, they don’t say anything about the white gauze peeking out from under his long sleeves, or the awkward and stittled way he holds himself. There’s more here than what meets the eye, that much has always been obvious.

It’s all a question of how much more.

Wymack comes back alone a good half-hour later.

“You’re still all here?” he asks, gruff. He throws Andrew’s lightened cigarette pack on the counter and slams a second one next to it. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Nope,” Nicky says.

“If you’re going to accept a new tenant, I think we should know,” Wilds says.

Wymack snorts. “He’ll sign the papers tomorrow. Get out. This is a place of business.”

The Foxes leave noisily, back to the lounge and their limitless gossip. There’s been enough to the encounter to bring them together for a few days.

Wymack loiters, as if sensing Andrew’s eyes boring in his back. Maybe he does; who knows with witches?

“You got something to say?”

“He can’t stay.”

“He can and he will.” When Andrew doesn’t answer, Wymack turns back toward him, splaying his hands flat on the counter. “I won’t have you scare him away, Andrew.”

“Why?”

“Because we need the money.” Wymack sighs. “We’re not exactly making fortunes round here.”

The apartment has been left empty to rent for the whole time Andrew’s been there. Considering it’s on the fifth floor and the building doesn’t have an elevator, there haven’t been a lot of offers. The last person who visited refused to come back when she learned it was right by Andrew’s apartment; Boyd had to escort her out of the building when she collapsed in his presence.

The top floor has been calm and empty, so far, despite Kevin. Andrew wants to keep it that way.

“I made Kevin a promise,” Andrew says.

“Will you renege on the one you made me for his?”

“That was a contract.”

“Is that so different?”

“Don’t twist the facts. I don’t want him.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“He’ll leave running,” Andrew warns.

It’s not a threat: just a fact. Most people can’t stand living so close to him. Kevin is an exception, because solitude tastes worse to him than anything he can catch by being so close to Andrew.

“If he leaves before his lease is up, I keep the deposit,” Wymack says. “But I’m warning you: you best be on your best behavior. We need him.”

“He needs _us_ ,” Andrew says. “You’ve seen him. Didn’t your little walk with him confirm that?”

Wymack shrugs. “It goes both way, smart brain. He won’t be a threat to Kevin. Pick your battles.”

It’s far from a satisfying conclusion to the conversation. For now, and because he owes Wymack, Andrew will allow it. Andrew doesn’t believe in luck, but maybe Josten is the quiet kind that can be taught.

Andrew almost snorts at his own thoughts.

Unlikely.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me (and the fic) on tumblr at [jsteneil](http://jsteneil.tumblr.com/tagged/magic-au).


End file.
